Shite from Spain! (Now with added France and Italy)

[aldo135]

5 and a bit hours the following day had us in Volvic, where it was suddenly very warm! We went to cool off in the pool but found it’s picture on the pitch up website must have been taken by an estate agent, it was essentially a large bathtub 😂

 

[aldo135]

Woke up really early with the heat, and the youngest wanting to go for a pee 😂 decided to transfer them into the car half asleep, quickly dismantled the tent and got going to point 3, to catch up with the girls in a villa between Cambrils and Salou, an hour past Barcelona. We were on the road about 5.15 and got there about 2 in the afternoon, worked so well as the kids slept the first half of the journey.

This was our stop for the next week, where there wasn’t too many spots but was spoilt with this amazing TR7, and an old school boy racer in a Renault 12 done up (I think) to look like a Gordini with blue paint and white stripes. I seen this race past me twice and failed to get a picture both times 🙈.

 

[aldo135]

Had a trip to Barcelona to get my old man from the airport, Alex talked me into going by the McLaren dealer. To be fair there was some shite in the street outside to balance out the fancy stuff!

[aldo135]

After a week in Spain, my wife and my dad got a flight back to Edinburgh. 3 kids and me were back on the road with a couple of stopovers in airbnb apartments to look forward to, with Italy, Switzerland and back to Calais the longer plan. The first stop was Narbonne which was nice but uneventful,  the second stop was Vence which rather more exciting, for all the wrong reasons…

The Saab overheated in bad traffic and scorching weather just outside Nice, it was nursed to a local garage and eventually left there while we continued our adventures with a hire car, as explained in my cry for help above 😂. 

While waiting we had a bus trip to Nice and to Monaco, to do the tourist bit and of course for youngest to seek out supercars!

 

 

[aldo135]

We picked up the hire car and headed for Florence, we were meant to have a stop off on the way but the car problems put us a day back. We camped in Fiesole in the hills above Florence, great views but slightly scary inclines to drive up and down. Was glad to be ragging a hire car at this point. I thought it was funny there was so many original Pandas on the road but something so light with skinny tyres makes a lot of sense. We stayed 4 days here including a day trip on the train to Rome.

 

[aldo135]

Next stop was Padua for 2 nights, so we could visit Venice for the day (no 127s hiding in the side streets there 😂) . We dropped the girls off shopping in Bologna so Alex and I could head to Modena. I assumed we would go and see Ferrari but we only had time for 1 and he picked Pagani. I hadn’t even heard of these until recently…It was a cool place to visit though, and there was an amazing UK registered spot outside the museum, with a clever number plate! I don’t normally like private plates but it works on something so rare.

[aldo135]

That Volvo was a couple of doors away from our digs, kids were laughing at me getting so excited 😂. Boatshite in Venice, then we headed across to Milan where our plans had to start changing. We should have been heading up to Basel, but of course our car is back in the hills above Nice so we dropped my oldest Erin at the airport to head straight home. The other 2 joined me and continued on a couple of hours towards the French border, stopping a bit short in Savona, where the Airbnb landlord was brilliant and let us stay free since we missed our stop with the broken Saab the previous week. He also directed us to a nearby pizzeria which was like being in someone’s back garden but was excellent and probably the cheapest food of the trip! After that it was back to Vence to find out what was happening with that Saab. 

[aldo135]

Back in France, it turned out the garage had trouble getting parts, so we found a camp site nearby which ended up being great, fresh bread ready for you in the morning, swimming pool and a free bus into town. As the week progressed it became apparent they were just having trouble with the Saab in general, and I eventually had to cut my losses and bin it. Sad times as I and a fair few others on here had good times with it, but it went in a blaze of glory cruising across Europe. I mentioned hindsight 95 times (see what I did there) in the thread I linked above about taking the Laguna instead or whatever but it’s done now and we had a great holiday! 

My wife booked us flights from nice via Paris back to Edinburgh. We went to a nearby primark and bought a couple of cases, took what we could, and gave our tent and most of our camping gear to the camp site. Took a few emails but the car was picked up and taken to a breakers. My youngest didn’t like flying but after all this she decided it wasn’t so bad 😂. 

[aldo135]

Thought I was done, but forgot we found these classics on display one night when heading for dinner in Vence. Again we ended up there by accident but it was a lovely wee town, would break down there again 🙈😂

[mk2_craig]

10 minutes ago, aldo135 said:

garage

I thought that was a mk1 Twingo at first then zoomed in - Metro convertible? Don’t think I’ve ever seen one with that front end. 

[aldo135]

Last few to tidy up. A seemingly abandoned car sales in Nice near ikea (meatballs was the only reasonably priced dinner in town) and a few randoms. Finish with the last picture I took of that Saab 😢🫡

[aldo135]

3 minutes ago, mk2_craig said:

I thought that was a mk1 Twingo at first then zoomed in - Metro convertible? Don’t think I’ve ever seen one with that front end. 

That was the first place I seen when we got to town and I thought that metro out front was fate, and that they would be the heroes. I went in and they said we can’t book you in for 8 weeks! Oh well…